Butterfly Garden

9/3/26 Woodland Park Zoo's Butterfly Garden

On the last week before the Butterfly Garden was to close for the season, the Woodland Park Zoo gave members the offer of free admission (usually $3). The only time I’d sketched live butterflies was 11 years ago at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Remembering that butterflies had been difficult to sketch, I’d never been inside Woodland Park’s exhibit, but who am I to decline a free ticket? I was delightfully surprised to be wrong: Many of the butterflies quietly sat for minutes on end on flowers or, strangely, information placards. They were relatively easy to sketch compared to continually moving animals.

Species identification photos made it easy to label them as I sketched. Noticing how many butterflies were mostly black, I wished I had a black sketchbook with me. I managed to color the Atala and Eastern black swallowtail with a brush pen, but they would have been easier using colored pencils on black paper.

Palm cockatoo in the Conservation Aviary

The most challenging part? Trying to draw foreshortened butterfly wings in perspective!

After spending an enjoyable hour in the Butterfly Garden, I needed to hoof it through the zoo to give myself “credit” for fitness walking and not just sketching. I got almost all the way back around, resisting more sketches, until I got to the Conservation Aviary, which is full of exotic (and sadly endangered) birds. I caught a quick gesture of the palm cockatoo before heading for the exit. 

(See my Instagram post for a butterfly video.)

Mr. Stripey

 

9/1/26 Neocolor II on UglyPads paper

Once again, my friend Alice generously shared her garden’s bounty. I think she picks out the prettiest produce just for me because she knows I will want to sketch it! Last week she gave me Mr. Stripey (the actual name of the variety), a humongous tomato that was so sweet, he almost tasted like he was sugared. I guess I’m going to have to stop eating tomatoes until next summer because anything I eat after that one would be a letdown.

Before Mr. Stripey became salad and caprese, however, he had to sit for me. It was an opportunity to try an idea I had been thinking about: using Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons on UglyPads colored paper. I had hoped that the Neo IIs would be opaque enough to cover the paper, and the bright teal blue would sparkle through as an “underpainting.” I had to work harder and longer than I expected to get the coverage I wanted, but the result is exactly what I had hoped for with an oil pastel-like effect. After applying many layers of Neocolor II, I used a dry-ish waterbrush to very sparingly activate some areas. I avoided activating too much because I didn’t want to obscure the underpainting. (I also know UglyPads paper can’t take too much water.)

Once to sketch and once to eat: Thank you, Alice, for the double gift!

I've long suspected that my scanner is no longer picking up some colors accurately. This image from my phone's camera captures the teal blue much better (though not exactly) than the scan at top of page. Hmm... maybe it's time to get a new scanner.

Two Piers

 

8/29/26 Green Lake

Several piers allow access to the water at Green Lake. Other than occasional fishermen, the piers aren’t used much. I’ve sketched several times from the end of a long pier that offers a view of the curve in the lakeshore (above). As I sketched, a young woman silently meditated nearby.

The sketch below, made a few days later, was from a short pier on the opposite side of the lake. Mostly hidden by trees, the pier hardly ever seems used. As many, many times as I have sketched at Green Lake, this was my first sketch ever of Duck Island! Since it’s visible from many places other than this pier, I don’t know why I’d neglected it so long. It’s just a tiny chunk of tree-filled land that birds probably love because humans aren’t constantly walking by. As I sketched, I heard both a belted kingfisher and an osprey (ID’d by the Merlin app) and eventually did see the kingfisher fly over. Although I couldn’t see its details at all, the large bird perched on Duck Island may have been the osprey.

8/31/26 Duck Island at Green Lake

And So it Begins

 

8/31/26 Green Lake sweet gums

Well, folks, there’s no denying it anymore: Fall is just around the corner. The Green Lake sweet gums say so.

These trees, by the way, are the ones I sketch most regularly in fall, sometimes more than once per season (this post from a few years ago includes a retrospective of many of them). In my early sketching years, I always stood right next to them, where I struggled to fit them in. (Back then, I was still calling them “maples”; I didn’t learn that they were sweet gums until quite a bit later.) More recently, I’ve been sketching them from across the lake, where their colors are a brilliant blur.

This week I stood where I could focus on the sweet gum at the head of the line, which consistently begins turning long before her sisters. The others are still mostly green.

“Summer Thunder” at Kubota Garden

 

8/30/26 Taiko drumming event at Kubota Garden

Since notice was very short, I wasn’t sure how many sketchers would join me at Kubota Garden for “Summer Thunder,” a taiko drumming event that also featured dancing and storytelling. I was happy to find at least a few folks there!

As soon as I arrived, I realized I hadn’t been to the garden in quite a while; I think the last time was in 2022. It’s lovely year-round, but late summer is probably one of the best times to be at Kubota. Some Japanese maples were just beginning to hint at turning; in a couple of months, they’ll be gorgeous. I could have spent a long time trying to capture layers of foliage, but on this sunny afternoon I was more in the mood for the festive taiko event (top of post).

Eventually I took a walk through the maze of the garden. No matter how many times I’ve been there, I always get lost on its meandering paths. I don’t know where I was when I found a pine tree that was asking to be sketched (a good eavesdropping spot, too).

Lunar Eclipse

 

8/27/26 partial lunar eclipse

Not paying attention to the time, I nearly missed last Thursday’s partial lunar eclipse when a text from a friend reminded me to look out the window. Luckily, the sky was clear at exactly 9:12 p.m. PT, when 96.2 percent of the moon was obscured – the peak of the near-total eclipse. I knew I would be asleep by the time it looked interesting again, so I was happy to catch this much.

Back in January 2019, I made a series of sketches of a total lunar eclipse that had begun earlier in the evening.

Phinney Station from the Other Side

 

8/25/26 Phinney Station, Phinney Ridge neighborhood

After our zoo visit and lunch nearby, Roy, Mary Jean and I walked a half-mile up the street to Bluebird Ice Cream for dessert. The tiny shop’s outdoor seating gave us an ideal view of Phinney Station directly across the street. That’s the venue where USk Seattle had a drink & draw a few weeks ago. I always find it fun to sketch a venue from the outside after having sketched it from the inside – especially when it has lots of umbrellas.

Paper notes: Since I knew I wanted to use Derwent Drawing pencils to draw zoo animals that day, I had brought along my Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook – my favorite paper for use with those soft pencils. Although they’re ideal for fuzzy animals, soft colored pencils weren’t right for Phinney Station’s hard edges. For that, I preferred using a brush pen on Zeta’s smooth surface, which imparts a crisp line to all inks.

How I love Hahnemuhle paper with water-soluble materials!

But what to do about all that background foliage? I knew better, but I went ahead and used water-soluble colored pencils (Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle and Derwent Inktense) and water-soluble Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons anyway. I activated the color, waited for the water to dry, then went back over it lightly with more dry color, trying to put back the texture I had lost. It’s not the same, though, as my all-time favorite 100 percent cotton Hahnemühle with water-soluble materials (as I used in the sketch at right, shown for comparison). Both the texture and especially the sizing of Zeta paper just don’t take wet media as well.